This report is focused around Lost and Found data using the intakes and outcomes data received for 2019-2020. Its goal is to reflect everything we could learn about L&F from the available data, make sure the numbers we see make sense, and highlight things that would be useful to show but some/all data required for them are missing.

Date range: 2019-01-01 to 2020-12-31

Report Structure

  1. KPIs: data points that indicate how good the shelter is doing on on L&F. They have numeric goals associated with them.
  2. Supporting data: data points that aren’t a goal themselves but serve as a proxy for improving a goal. For example, the method of RTH is not a performance indicator, but it helps identifying how RTHs take place. The number of strays found per ZIP code is not a metric to improve, but it shows where most strays are coming from to guide resource allocation.
  3. Data notes: the state of the data received from the shelter.
  4. Extra metrics: some ideas for additional L&F metrics and the data points they require.

Scroll down or use the table of contents on the left to navigate throughout the document. Most sections contain multiple tabs showing different facets of a data type. Most plots are interactive, meaning they include tooltips and allow hiding and showing parts and zooming in and out. If something went wrong, look for the house icon in the top right corner of each figure to reset.

KPIs

Yearly RTH Rates by Species

This section provides an overview of the RTH rate per year divided by species.

Overall RTH Rate

This table covers all strays and RTHs. RTH rates shown below are the number of strays with RTO outcome out of all strays. Looking at your subtypes, we excluded animals born in shelter (BORN @ SHT) and trapped (TRAP) from this count, trying to leave only those picked up by field services (PICK UP, CAUGHT), left over the counter (OTC) or abandoned at the shelter (LF AT SLT/VET). If we should change the inclusion/exclusion logic of strays this is easy to do.

When we go over this, let’s make sure we calculate the rate the same way you do, so we would want to make sure what we see makes sense. If these numbers are right, they are slightly higher than the HASS average of 30% despite a decrease from 2019 into 2020.

Species Year Strays RTH_Count RTH_Rate
Cat 2019 19175 258 0.01
Cat 2020 10570 136 0.01
Dog 2019 14089 4919 0.35
Dog 2020 7302 2299 0.31
Other 2019 1656 23 0.01
Other 2020 1031 15 0.01

Field RTH Rate

This one only counts animals who came in as strays from the field. Normally, we would then split these by RTH method between RTO in the field and in the shelter, but since there is not a way to tell whether field returns happen from the data, this is left out.

Field animals were considered anything with PICK UP or CAUGHT subtypes.

The RTH rate is slightly lower than the rate for OTC animals which appear on the next tab.

Species Year Strays RTH_Count RTH_Rate
Cat 2019 1250 18 0.01
Cat 2020 728 14 0.02
Dog 2019 1816 527 0.29
Dog 2020 889 239 0.27
Other 2019 313 10 0.03
Other 2020 186 3 0.02

Shelter RTH Rate

This shows the numbers only for strays that were public drop offs or other subtypes (including abandoned at shelter). Indeed, the rates are slightly lower than field intakes for dogs (32% vs. 27% in 2020).

Species Year Strays RTH_Count RTH_Rate
Cat 2019 19196 254 0.01
Cat 2020 10155 124 0.01
Dog 2019 12345 4392 0.36
Dog 2020 6452 2060 0.32
Other 2019 1549 13 0.01
Other 2020 1005 12 0.01

RTH Over Time

These three time series show the RTH rate per month, to show whether there were times with particularly high or low rates as well as the overall trajectory.

Overall RTH

It seems like the rate has been pretty stable over all with peaks around the turn of the year, which is a pattern identified in multiple other shelters.

OTC RTH

This figure only counts strays who had a subtype of OTC, while is the most frequent one. This shows the decrease the the yearly stats show – it seems like the return rates for field pickups have been slightly increasing in 2020 (see next tab) so the overall rate figure seems more stable despite the slow decrease visible for OTC animals in 2020.

#### Non-OTC RTH This is the complement to the previous figure – all strays who were not OTC. The RTH rate improves in 2020, as opposed to the OTC dogs.

Stray Intakes

This section shows the number of stray intakes over time, as well as the breakdown of strays by field/shelter intake. It mainly helps us get a sense of your intake volumes.

Stray Intakes by Month

Stray Intake Subtypes

OTC is the vast majority (again this is mostly context for us, this is probably no news for you).

Length of Stay Differences - RTH v. Other Outcomes

The average difference in length of stay (in days) between strays with RTH outcomes and all other strays is shown in the table below – roughly 13 days for dogs and 5 for cats when looking at the average.

That means that every successful RTH saves 13 days of care on average at LA Animal Services, and field RTH would save an extra day or two on average for RTH from the shelter.

This could translate to pretty significant cost savings at scale – assuming a daily cost of care of 30$, if 1000 more dogs were returned home in 2020, it would have saved LA Animal Services about $390,000 in costs of care. This is a fairly simple calculation, but it gets at the magnitude of the potential benefits.

Species Outcome Count Average_Length_Of_Stay
Cat Other Outcomes 18708 8.30
Cat RTO 410 3.22
Dog Other Outcomes 11856 15.46
Dog RTO 7218 2.41

Supporting Data

Stray Intake and RTH By Found Location - Dogs

The following maps show stray intake and RTH rate by Census tracts to highlight geographical patterns. The first and second tab are similar to previous metrics; the third tab, RTH Gap, shows the number of strays who were not returned home per census tract.

The data used in this section is the ‘finders zip’ field in the files sent to HASS. We tried to use the ‘where found’ field which would provide the more accurate location, but it was missing for many animals. There was often a reference to a ‘source address’ in that field, so if there is another location field that would be better to plot here, we can do that! Using a specific address will also help us narrow down the map from a ZIP code level to something more granular like a Census tract.

The ZIP codes mapped below are only those with prefix 90, 91, 92, or 93. These seemed to be accounting for the majority of animals. Additionally, animals born in shelter, left at shelter, left at vet, with a ‘NULL’ value on where found, or a value including the word ‘shelter’ are removed to eliminate animals left at the shelter.

Stray Intake

The area around the airport stands out most clearly.

RTH Rate

Note that the areas with the highest stray intake also have among the lowest RTH rate, and vice versa.

RTH Gap

This combines the other two tabs to highlight where most additional RTH potential exists - it shows the number of strays NOT returned to home in each area. As the RTH rate is fairly low in the areas with the highest stray intakes, it looks pretty similar to the first map.

Overall, these maps show data for 19398 stray dogs of which 6693 were RTH.

Stray Intake and RTH By Found Location - Cats

This is similar to the maps above, but for 23200 cats of which 360 were RTH.

Stray Intake

The map looks somewhat similar from far out, but a few different areas stand out. Only ZIP codes with 10+ cats were counted.

RTH Rate

Since RTH rate is pretty low across the city, it is also low throughout in this map.

RTH Gap

This is very similar to the stray map because of the low RTH occurrence for cats.

Showing 22926 stray cats of which 357 were RTH.

Data Notes

  1. Found location - as mentioned above, if there is a better field for mapping, we could do that.

  2. Outcome subtype – if it is interesting to break down RTH cases by (1st, 2nd, 3rd) time as you do in the outcome subtype, we could do that.

  3. Do you do returns in the field? If so (as your L&F survey results indicated) where is this documented?

Extra Metrics

Other things we could show if we had the data for it:

  1. Distance traveled by lost dogs- We could add this upon getting both intake and outcome addresses for RTH dogs.
  2. Microchip analysis - getting a field that indicates chip scan results or chip issue date will allow us to identify the RTH rates for animals with/out chips and the areas in which animals come in with/out chips.
  3. Number of public found reports and successful RTH by the public (if you are using the lost and found report module in petpoint).

Thanks for reading through, and we’re looking forward to talking through it and thinking about more ways to make this data useful for you.